Making everyone happy is impossible. Pissing them off is a piece of cake. I like cake.

Friday, January 02, 2009

Have you totally lost your mind, Darling?

As we are all well aware, Gordon Brown and his badger-faced sock-puppet, Darling, have mortgaged our futures (and that of our children) on pumping billions of pounds—nay, tens of billions of pounds—into the banks in order to try to stimulate the economy.

Most of us were also pretty fucking sure that it wasn't going to work. And if it hasn't, then what the fuck should we do?

Alistair Darling has been forced to consider a second bailout for banks as the lending drought worsens.

The Chancellor will decide within weeks whether to pump billions more into the economy as evidence mounts that the £37 billion part-nationalisation last year has failed to keep credit flowing. Options include cash injections, offering banks cheaper state guarantees to raise money privately or buying up “toxic assets”, The Times has learnt.

Yep, having already pumped ten of billions of pounds into the banks and it not having worked, that fuckwit Brown and his idiot bloody Chancellor are going to do exactly the same fucking thing!

20 comments:

There is a libertarian argument that the original New Deal which western governments other than Germany have looked to as a model prolonged the great depression. It's based around Amity Schlaes' book of last year, and also on Jansson's Sixteen Trillion Dollar Mistake. I'm not wholly convinced but your readers might be, Devil.

DK, while I suspect that we agree that it is a bad idea for the gummint to use taxpayers' money to bail out banks, I think we will disagree on whether what they are trying to achieve (albeit that it is unachievable) is worth pursuing.

IMHO, what they hope to achieve is to prop up house prices, which I, as a proponent of the idea that house prices aka land values should be a source of tax revenues rather than something worth subsidising, oppose.

You, OTOH, believe that house prices aka land values should be subsidised indirectly by being taxed lightly - or preferably not at all.

I think that I am being consistent here. If not, then obviously Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Henry George, Winston Churchill and Milton Friedman were way off piste as well.

The initial bail-out was not about stimulating the economy it was about preventing the banks collapsing.

The problem they faced was that they wouldn't lend to each other because they feared they'd not get the money back. So, loads of capital was pumped in to give the security required to overcome that particular problem.

Getting the banks to lend to businesses and individuals was a different matter. It was initially assumed that once the banks started lending to each other again they would also lend to the rest of us. But in the same way they stopped lening to each other because they saw the borrower as having insufficient security for the loan, so they see businesses and individuals as having insufficient security.

They won't lend against land/buildings because both commercial and residential properties are falling in market value. They won't lend against anticipated future income because they cannot be sure there will be any future income.

Those looking for credit today are either good risks or bad risks. The banks are able to tell which are which but are being ultra-cautious so many good risks are missing out. The government has no means of assessing risks in individual transactions.

The current problem is the over-caution of banks in relation to loans they view objectively as good risks. No doubt their excessive caution is because they cannot know what is just around the corner and they fear the worst.

There is only one thing government can do to address that problem, and that is to give guarantees for a proportion of loans so that the banks can lend to those they consider good risks and know they are protected against at least part of the risk of the monster round the corner.

The options mentioned in the article you cite are all aimed at improving banks' capital positions. We are beyond that stage, they have quite sufficient capital. The question now is how the banks can help businesses and individuals not how they can help themselves.

We are back with the 'old chestnut' of public confidence.We all know,the rest of the world all knows, that this government are lost...way out in the middle of a financial ocean on a very small raft.They were incompetent when times were good.Now they are all paralysed with fear and there is no land in sight.Untill somebody, probably the IMF gets a grip, nothing is going to change.

There is a huge difference between preventing a run on the bank and "keeping credit flowing". I agree with much of what the Fat Bigot says, but I am not sure that the banks are being "excessively cautious". The banks aren't lending because they have (finally) recognised that it is poor practice to give money to people who have fuck all chance of paying it back or to buy houses that will be worth less in 12 months than they are now.

Solving the credit crunch with more credit is manifestly insane and will only lead to a deeper and longer recession. McFuck and the Badger must know this. The only explanation is that they want to keep money swishing around to delay the worst of the recession until after the election.

Let's face it, the most useless UK government in recent history, at least since Callaghan's, are going to do what they are going to do, so don't let it get you down as there's nothing you can do to stop the stupid bastards.

Better to prepare yourself and your family for the inevitable. Start by paying off as much debt as you can, and put any savings in a place where they might survive the coming depression. European bonds and gold might be possibilities.

The most immediate thing that should be done is to remove the Bank of England's secret lending scheme.(Either by abolishing it or simply publishing who has borrowed what.)

While that is in place and is about £250billion in size, banks will borrow off The Bank rather than borrow off each other. Some LIBOR rates have come down quite a bit. Banks aren't eager to lend between each other because the market for lending out the borrowed money has disappeared/is seen as far riskier than before.

Massive amounts of interbank lending was not normal practice yet those in charge desperately want to get it going again.

Gendeau said..."Gordzilla is a one trick donkey. All he knows is to throw money at problems".

I refute this utterly. Gordon is a two-trick pony. First he taxes, then he spends.

Note how all gov't "achievements" are specified in terms of how much of our money they have chucked at a problem. Actual outcomes are never mentioned.

As for our financial dilemma, I would suggest scrapping both Employers' and Employees' National Insurance, and increasing income tax so that the overall effect is neutral.

The effect would be to increase the chances of job creation (or at least retention in the recession) and simplify the tax system meaning the tax take could be less but in real terms be revenue neutral.

I am going to adopt the Gorgon strategy. I'm going to quit my job, walk into my local bank and ask them to lend me £10 million, on the basis that I just need it in the short term and when growth happens in few years I will be able to give it back because I'm 'good for it'.

After the bank staff have stopped laughing and picked themselves up off the floor, I would doubtless be removed from said premises, by security.

The UK economy is no different, and this is the root of the problem. This 'plucky British spirit' they keep banging on about is exactly the reason for the crisis, which has been stalking the economy since 2003, staved off only by a credit binge which has poured petrol on the effects of economic downturn. The majority of the English are still refusing to accept responsibility. Like the little wanker estate agent on the TV the other day. 'oh, its been so bad since the summer, but now in December I shifted 3 properties' Well fuck me sunshine, that means the recession is over then doesn't it? I suppose you will be off out to get that new BMW on tick now then, eh?

Boom and Bust follow each other like the seasons, the longer and larger the boom period, the deeper and more bitter the bust period. Economic cycles seem to last 11-13 years, however politicians, and the general British public can only remember the last 10 years. Pitiful. People need to be aware of the consequences of being a self important cunt, which England is currently full of.

HBOS and RBS should have been allowed to fail, the cost of returning everyone's savings would be cheaper than Badger face's proposed spending plans.

By the way, now the British taxpayers own RBS, they should be forced to cut cost's, and stop printing that bastard Scottish money that no fucker south of the border will take?!?

The money is not just down the toilet, but past the sewer pipes and dissipating in the sea. Throwing more money after it will have as little effect as the first load.

If a bank (or any other business) cannot survive in its environment, then it should cease to exist. This is only right and natural. What would you rather have, a Soviet-style state-supported command economy, or a competitive laissez-faire capitalist economy?

I can see the EU circling the same plug-hole that ComEcon gurgled down...